Maoism is back in China
By Thi Minh-Hoang NGO
The vast anti-bribery campaign is a sign that China is now again not only at war, at least politically, but also at revolution, at least underground. Not a war against Japan and its Southeast Asia neighboring countries struggling for the islands of East and South China Sea. But a war of the central state against regional and local powerful leaders. A war of the modern against the tradition in representation and practice of power. In fact, a war of the state impersonal and collective leadership against the local personified and charismatic leadership which often leads to tyranny. A war of the opening and web-connected modern society relying for its safeguard on the central state and its political system against the traditional “black society” (hei shehui) relying on local patronage stemming from the nexus of personal and clanship connections. A core problem is that since the Maoist revolution, the state and its political system have been embedded into the “black society” and threaten to burst into regional and local kingdoms led by charismatic and often tyrannical leaders who like Bo Xilai and its clan in Sichuan and his native Shanxi province, are both “red and black” .
Why such a political war while the central government supports peace and harmony in international relations, striving as a member of the international community to avoid a world war in Syria? There is little doubt that the so-called Socialist China is nowadays most concerned by domestic problems such as the dilapidation of state resources for bribes by regional and local power that weakens the central state and its status as economic superpower.
An underground revolution is now storming. But it is not a liberal revolution from which a Western-type modern state based on multipartism and the rule of law will likely emerge. It is a revolution of tradition within modernity, with powerful regional and local charismatic leaders such as Bo Xilai threatening to take grip on the central state.
As showed by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday*, Mao transformed the Leninist state based on collective leadership into its own tyranny based on its personal leadership and charisma. Like Bo Xilai, he was both traditional as a tyrant and modern as a Maoist revolutionary. He liked revolutionary ideals such as equality and purity because they can make him a great leader in History, which fits perfectly to its megalomaniac ego. But he liked also power, money and women. Mao belonged to the revolutionary society as much as to the traditional and “black society” which led to the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and the mysterious evaporation of his fellows and rivals.
With the support of the powerful State Central Commission of Discipline led by Wang Qishan, President Xi Jinping is now struggling to save the central state and its Marxist-Leninist system from the “black society” by attacking the tradition of accumulating wealth and power, using bribes such as high-value gifts, banquets and travels in order to make and extend personal and clanship connections. The “masses” are urged to report on (jubao), in other words to denounce, such corrupt behaviors from the “black society” by using the official website of the central government. Again, Party cadres are urged to make criticism and self criticism although this Leninist institution has fallen into oblivion for the past years. President Xi Jinping is initiating a revival not of Mao, but of Maoism, that is of the ideology and institutional practice of the Maoist revolution in order to consolidate the fragile central state as nation-state and its political system based on collective leadership. To now, the mass campaign against regional and local power has targeted not only North and Central China, in particular Bo Xilai’s fiefdoms in Sichuan and Shanxi province, but also the South, in particular Guangdong province, as well as for the resilience of tradition among ethnic minorities, the Southwest border regions like Yunnan province.
Will President Xi Jinping succeed in Maoism where Mao himself failed?
The future of the monopolistic one party-state depends on to what extent the central leadership is modern, more Westernized than traditional and also on the support of the masses. President Xi and his supporters might win against the tyrants and the “black society” because the Chinese want social stability and economic prosperity, not like in the millenarian past, another cycle of civil wars and political disorder. The Warlords and more recently the trauma of the Cultural Revolution are still vivid in memory. Another reason is that within globalization the Chinese have become more westernized and can put the monopolistic nature of the one party-state into question while aspiring for a centralized and strong state. However, what kind of rule of law can emerge within an authoritarian state that however, can only survive and strengthen itself by opening to the world, which is the very condition for economic growth and state power?
*Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao, The Unknown Story, Random House, 2005
Thi Minh-Hoang NGO is the author of Doit-on avoir peur de la Chine? Le communisme chinois et l’Occident (Should We Fear of China? Chinese Communism and the West), La Tour d’Aigues: L’Aube, 2013